OBITUARY. Rosa María Ravera (1932-2021)

It is with great sadness and regret that we have all received – especially the Argentine, Latin American and international semiotic community – the news of the death of Rosa María Ravera.
This universal rosarina, a woman of unmistakable joy, always smiling and generous, extraordinarily loyal to her friends and to her convictions, left a deep mark on the studies of semiotics, art theory and aesthetics. She enthusiastically led national and international associations in those disciplines that she helped to consolidate with her wisdom and her charisma.
This is not the time to recount an extensive curriculum vitae, punctuated with academic and artistic merits, but to evoke the human side of the warm and welcoming person, with her eternal smile and proverbial kindness, always ready to help, welcome, teach or understand others, colleagues, friends and countless disciples.
She had the respect and admiration of Umberto Eco, who always had a very special esteem for her. Perhaps the reason is that, like the illustrious Italian semiotician, Rosa María knew how to combine creation and research, art and theory, masterfully fusing semiotic reflection, aesthetic speculation and artistic experience.
In the years in which she presided over the National Academy of Fine Arts of Argentina, between 2001 and 2006, she opened this worthy institution to the discipline that she served so much and so brilliantly for so many years and many semiotic colleagues were able to convene in the halls of her learned Buenos Aires house.
She leaves us as an exceptional human being, a woman full of charm and intelligence, endowed like few others with an unrepeatable intellectual power and creative inspiration.
Rest in peace and eternal happiness our dearest Rosa María Ravera, whom we will never forget.

José María Paz Gago
President of the Latin American Federation of Semiotics (FELS)
Vice President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS / AIS)